All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Chapter 692

Luna gave him a look that said you are the worst person alive to argue that point with.

He shrugged, then winced faintly when the motion tugged at his still-damaged circuits. “Learning geomancy properly would make your job easier.”

Luna looked ahead, scanning the brush. “My job.”

“Protecting Viola,” Ludger said, matter-of-fact. “Earth shaping gives cover. Restraints. Terrain control. Emergency walls. You don’t need to become a mage. You just need enough to make bad situations less bad.”

Luna didn’t answer right away.

Leaves brushed against her shoulders as they moved, sunlight flickering down in broken strips through the canopy. Her hand twitched once more toward where her knives should have been, then stopped halfway.

Ludger added, without looking at her, “But do whatever you want.”

The dry tone took the edge off the advice. Barely. Luna frowned, thinking about it despite herself. Geomancy. Properly. Not just enough to mimic a trick. Enough to rely on.

The idea sat in her head longer than she expected. Then both of them forgot the conversation at once. Because the forest floor changed. Luna halted so abruptly a leaf brushed across Ludger’s chest before he stopped too.

Ahead of them, cutting through the undergrowth, was a path. Not a game trail made by random animals drifting toward water. This was clearer than that, pressed earth, broken ground cover, repeated passage. Narrow, but definite.

And there were signs on it. Footprints. Not one set. More than one. Some deeper, some lighter. Some older, edges softened by damp soil. Some recent enough that the disturbed dirt still looked fresh. Something, or someone, had walked this way.

Luna slowed first.

She crouched near the disturbed earth, one hand hovering over the trail without touching it, eyes narrowing as she followed the drag marks through the undergrowth.

“…Those look like snake trails,” she said.

She glanced ahead, then to the side where another line cut through the ferns.

“Some pretty big snakes.”

Ludger frowned and stepped closer, initially ready to dismiss it as panic-pattern recognition. The forest floor was messy, roots, broken leaves, old rain grooves, animal tracks layered over each other.

But then he looked properly. Not just at the line. At the edges. The crushed grass leaned inward in a repeating wave. Small branches were bent low, not snapped by feet but pressed aside by something long and heavy sliding through. Here and there, the dirt had shallow crescent scrapes where scales, or something like scales, had caught on stone.

Ludger’s expression tightened.

“…No,” he muttered. “You’re right.”

He knelt, ignoring the way his skin crawled without his magical senses. Using only normal sight still felt wrong. Naked. Slow. Like trying to fight with one eye closed.

But he forced himself to focus.

Aleia’s lessons surfaced in fragments, half lectures, half field drills, all delivered with that patient look that said stop overthinking and use your eyes.

Don’t stare at one print. Read the area.

Weight tells you more than shape.

Direction is a lie if you only check the center line. Look at what got displaced.

Ludger exhaled and shifted position.He checked the disturbed moss. The angle of bent stems. A patch of bark polished smooth where something had brushed past.

Then another trail, a little farther left. And another. His eyes sharpened. There weren’t just one or two.

There were multiple tracks crossing the same section, some newer, some older, but all with the same broad dragging signature. Ludger reached down and touched the soil. Still slightly loose in one groove. Recent.

He scanned farther out, widening his frame of reference the way Aleia had drilled into him.

“Not random,” he said quietly.

Luna looked at him. “What?”

He pointed, not at the clearest trail, but at the surrounding damage.

“Look at the ferns. These were pushed from different angles, but they all recover toward the same side. And those saplings…” He stood and moved a few steps, checking another line. “Same thing. Whatever made these passed through separately, but they all turned the same way.”

Luna’s expression shifted from curiosity to alertness.

“A group?”

“Maybe.” Ludger’s gaze tracked the terrain ahead, following the subtle pattern through the trees. “Or a nest route. Hunting path. Migration line.”

He didn’t like any of those options.

He crouched again, slower this time, and studied a wider patch where leaves had been churned near a root cluster. There, small broken shells. Rodent bones. A patch of smeared mud and a faint, oily scent that the wind carried only when he leaned close.

Snake, probably. Big snake, definitely. Ludger straightened, face going flat in that way Luna recognized as him settling into problem-solving mode.

“I can tell where the trail heads now,” he said.

He turned his head slightly, checking three separate drag marks with a quick sequence of glances.

“Actually… all of them.”

Luna followed his line of sight into the denser part of the forest where the light dimmed and the undergrowth thinned in strange patches, as if heavy bodies kept using the same corridors.

He could feel it, not with mana, not with geomancy, not with any of the tools he usually leaned on.

Just pattern. Direction. Intent written into the ground.

“The real trails all head in the same direction,” Ludger said, voice low. “Which means whatever’s ahead is important enough that they keep returning to it.”

Luna’s hand instinctively moved toward where her knives should have been, then stopped in empty air. Her jaw clicked once in annoyance.

Ludger noticed and said nothing about it. He just looked into the trees, eyes narrowed.

“Stay light on your feet,” he said. “And watch the branches, not just the ground. If they’re that big, some won’t stay low.”

Luna gave a short nod, all humor gone. Then the two of them started forward, following the snake trails into the darker part of the forest.

They kept moving through the forest at a cautious pace, following the subtle drag patterns and flattened growth deeper into the shade.

The air changed as they went. Less steam. More damp earth. A heavier, green smell under the rot and bark. Ludger slowed near a low cluster of broad-leafed bushes and raised a hand for Luna to stop.

There were fruits there. Small, round, dark-skinned things hanging in tight bunches under the leaves, half-hidden unless you were looking for them. A few had already fallen and split open on the ground, sticky flesh exposed to ants and beetles.

Ludger crouched and picked one.

He turned it in his fingers, checking the skin, the stem, the puncture marks from insects. No obvious rot. No strange discoloration. No oily sheen. He brought it closer and smelled it. Sweet. Sharp. A little citrus-like. Nothing immediately wrong. He checked another one. Then another.

One by one, methodical, not because he trusted them, but because he didn’t. Luna watched with her arms folded, expression flat as always, though her eyes tracked every movement.

Ludger finally bit into one.

Juice burst over his tongue, sweet, slightly sour, cold from the shade. He chewed slowly, waited a few seconds, then ate the rest. He tried a second fruit from another branch. Then a third.

They tasted pretty good. Not amazing. Not magical. Just real food.

Luna tilted her head. “You’re just eating random forest fruit?”

Ludger picked another and rubbed dirt off it with his thumb.

“I checked them.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He popped the fruit into his mouth and chewed, then answered while scanning the bushes around them.

“I know.”

Luna stared at him for a second, then said, “You’re not worried about wrecking your stomach, Ludger?”

Ludger swallowed and shrugged.

“It’s better than getting weaker from hunger.”

That part was simple math. He was already moving without magical senses, already compensating for discomfort and caution. Hunger would make him slower, sloppier, more irritable worse at everything that mattered.

He plucked one more fruit and held it up, thinking.

“At the same time…” He looked around the base of the shrubs and the surrounding ground. “I don’t see many fallen fruits left in the area.”

Luna glanced down, following his gaze. There were some. But not many. Too few, considering how heavy the branches were. Ludger pointed to a snapped stem and a patch of disturbed leaves near the bush edge.

“These were harvested and eaten recently. Maybe not by people,” he added, glancing toward the trail cuts through the undergrowth, “but something’s definitely feeding here.”

He stood and looked from the fruit bushes to the nearest drag marks.

“And since this patch is close to the trail…” His eyes narrowed. “The trail might run nearby because of the fruit.”

Luna nodded silently, absorbing it without argument.

Makes sense, her face said.

Food source. Repeated movement. Route stability. They moved again, slower now, Ludger paying more attention to fruit clusters and signs of feeding while Luna watched the lanes between trunks. After a while, Ludger spoke without looking at her.

“You’re using my name a lot.”

Luna’s steps didn’t stop, but there was the smallest pause in her rhythm.

“…What?”

Ludger glanced sideways, expression neutral. “Ludger this, Ludger that. I don’t remember you using my name at all before.”

That got her to look at him.

Her face stayed blank, trained, controlled, unreadable if someone didn’t know what to look for. But her tone, when she answered, was a little off. Not enough for most people to catch. Enough for him.

“What about it?”

Ludger looked forward again, following a bent fern line.

“Nothing.”

Luna’s eyes stayed on him for another second.

He added, “I’m just mentioning it. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

She held the blank expression a moment longer, then looked away and adjusted her path around a root.

“Good,” she said.

Her tone was even again. Mostly. Ludger didn’t push. He just tossed the last fruit stem aside and kept walking, eyes on the trail, while the forest swallowed their footsteps and the snake paths led them farther in.

They walked in silence for a while after that, the kind of silence that wasn’t tense but wasn’t relaxed either, both of them listening to the forest, both pretending they weren’t replaying the last exchange.

Luna was the one who broke it.

She pointed at him without looking directly, more gesture than accusation.

“You’re being pretty talkative too.”

Ludger blinked. “Am I?”

“Yes.” Luna stepped over a root and ducked under a low branch. “Back home, you’re always doing something. Or thinking about something. Usually both.”

Ludger considered that for a second, then gave a small shrug.

“I can’t do either here.”

Luna glanced at him. He kept his eyes on the trail, voice matter-of-fact.

“I can only focus on survival and recovering.” He nudged a patch of leaves aside with his boot, checking the ground beneath. “I can’t work on improving the guild or the town while I’m… wherever this is.”

That part bothered him more than the discomfort, more than the lack of magical senses, maybe even more than the danger. Not being able to do anything useful.

No walls to reinforce. No routes to plan. No training schedules. No logistics. No dispatch notes. No supplies to organize. No recruits to yell at for doing something stupid. Just a forest, a trail, and whatever was at the end of it. Ludger exhaled softly.

“I might’ve enjoyed a tropical vacation,” he added, dry enough that it almost sounded real, “if I didn’t have so many things back home to do.”

Luna snorted once at that. Ludger’s mouth twitched.

“And,” he continued, “if I didn’t have an overprotective mother who might jump into the ocean to look for me if I take too long to return.”

That got a sharper look from Luna.

She slowed a fraction, then asked, “Are you complaining about having a caring mother like Elaine?”

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